


Two for A Thousand

by adastreia_writes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Fantasy, Hela - Freeform, Helheimr | Hel (Realm), Lesbian Character, RPG characters, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23721010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adastreia_writes/pseuds/adastreia_writes
Summary: Vilda has no soul. When she finds herself stuck in Helheim, teaching the realm's rulers about the magic of her people, that becomes a problem- no one other than Hela can see her, but her old lover, Syg is there, trying to escape every day, unaware of her even when she stands right next to her. As time passes, Vilda learns more about Hela and tries to tell Syg she's there through flowers all while trying to find a way to escape Helheim with her. In a realm of stone and ice, she's not sure her nature magic can do much, but she'll be damned if she doesn't try.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	Two for A Thousand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maragraphs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maragraphs/gifts).



> Did someone say fantasy norse lesbians conquering death? No? Well here it is anyway-

The first time Vilda sees Syg in Hel, she reaches out to touch her arm. When her fingers pass through air and frost, and she feels death chill her bones, she weeps. She keeps weeping even when Syg isn't there anymore and she kneels in the middle of a frozen alley, unmoving and ugly, her sobs falling on deaf ears. No one minds. She is, after all, a body amongst souls. A ghost to the ghosts themselves. There is no sun in Helheim, but Vilda feels as if she spent days mourning a loss double as sharp as the first one. 

At first, she avoids the shantytown. She tries to rationalize- it isn’t because she fears seeing Syg again, no, it’s the other ghosts that unnerve her. It’s their hollow gazes, or even worse, it’s the dying energy some of them emanate that she wants to avoid and not seeing the same disintegration in Syg’s eyes. It’s the chill that they give off she dislikes and not the memory of Syg freezing her to her core that first time. She doesn’t want to hear her hooves clopping on ice and deafen her with their echoes. At least in Hela’s stone palace, the sound is heard by someone other than herself. 

She spends her days teaching Hela instead. In the goddess’ private study, sculpted from cool stone and burning ice, she demonstrates her magic and tells her stories of centaur deaths and spirits.

“It’s odd,” she admits one day as she sits on her knees, feeling the cold seep through the fur on her lower body. 

Hela sits opposite of her on an elaborate armchair. Her skeletal leg is crossed over her fleshy one and she rests the beautiful part of her face on her fingers. She gives Vilda a lazy smile, the rotting muscles on the other half of her face trying to mirror their healthy counterparts and pulling pointlessly. The smile is etched in bone on that side.

“What is?” 

“Teaching you. You learning about nature spirits and life in a realm that is devoid of it.”

Hela looks amused now, raising an eyebrow and mouthing an ‘ _ah_ ’ as she untangles her limbs and gets up. Vilda stands up as well, feeling suddenly on edge. She tries not to show it, even as her palms sweat. 

“Last I checked, Helheim hosts you. You seem alive to me,” says Hela and pokes Vilda’s leg. Her tail twitches but she refuses to speak. Hela cocks her head to the side, looking over her guest centaur. Vilda isn’t sure what she sees, but she doesn’t want the pity that paints the goddess’ face when she sighs and pouts. 

“Then again, who knows with that broken heart of yours? Your shieldmaiden certainly seems to be more alive than you.”

There’s a drop of frustration in her voice but something squeezes Vilda’s heart at the mention of Syg and she focuses on her pain instead. She winces and looks away from Hela. Through gritted teeth, she manages to say: “Don’t talk about Syg.”

She hears Hela scoff and by now she’s acquainted with her enough to know she was probably waving her hand dismissively at her. 

“ _Syg_ is here and just like you, here is where she will remain. You might as well get used to her and patch up your heart sooner rather than later,” she says before placing a hand on Vilda’s shoulder. “Move on, Vilda.”

Hela leaves her then, but Vilda keeps pacing in the study, her words echoing in her head. _Move on. Move on. Move on._ How could she ever move on? She supposes a start would be to be able to look at her old lover.

Vilda’s plan backfires. _Badly._ When she first sees Syg again after what was probably months of isolation, she feels her heart swell and promptly shatter when she realizes Syg’s movements are more sluggish than they were when she had last seen her. She fears the same hollowness that has swallowed almost everyone else in the shantytown has taken her as well, so she follows her as she walks through the streets. Syg rubs her eyes often, as if she hasn’t rested well, as if she’s missing sleep she doesn’t need anymore. She looks over her shoulder a lot, though, as if she’s worried someone will sneak up on her and that’s when Vilda sees the warrior she once was shine through fiery eyes. Every time, Vilda’s heart races, thinking this is when Syg will see her. Syg never does. Vilda retreats to Hela’s stone fortress again. 

“Your shieldmaiden is a nuisance,” Hela shouts as she stomps towards Vilda weeks? months? later. Startled, Vilda drops the enchantment she had been working on and the tulip seed she was trying to nurture went black and withered within seconds. She turns to Hela with furrowed brows and a pout. 

“That was the flower you wanted me to show you later,” she chided.

Hela doesn’t seem to care. Her shiny black hair, usually kept in an elaborate bun full of braids, was disheveled, with many loose strands falling in her eyes. In part, Vilda is happy for that change. The eye exposed in its socket always made her uncomfortable. Hela is in her jet black armor, pelts and amulets with runes on them decorating the plates. There’s a cut on her cheek, bleeding. Vilda knew gods bled but she wasn’t sure Hela could.

“Your shieldmaiden,” Hela repeats, “is _unruly._ Forget whatever nature spirit magic I wanted to see. Today, you will tell me how to force her to comply. This is _my_ realm. I will not tolerate disobedience.”

Despite herself, Vilda is proud. That wild look of pure fury Hela has on her face right now, _Syg_ put it there. She takes one more look at the cut and tries not to smile. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but she was willing to bet Syg did that as well. Only someone as fierce as her would.  
“What are you smiling at?” Hela snaps, obviously in no mood for her usual niceties. Vilda’s smile turns into a grin.  
“The answer to your request is simple, Hela,” she says with a confidence she hasn’t felt ever since she first became bound to the goddess of death. “You _can’t_ force Syg.”

Hela takes time to calm down again what with her consistent failures to deal with whatever Syg was doing. It gives Vilda all the time she needs to build up the courage to find Syg in the ghosttown again.

She starts looking at her from afar, sometimes following her around as she wanders through the shantytown surrounding Hela’s palace. Hela never tries to confront her while she’s doing that. Despite her fury, Vilda knows she doesn’t want to punish Syg. She is a just ruler, but one that does not like her rule questioned. 

It takes some time before Vilda finally sees what Syg has been doing. Every day, in what feels like afternoon to Vilda, Syg walks to the entrance of Helheim, the colossal pillars that separate them from Nidhogg and Nilfheim and finally, Yggdrasil, and she tries to escape. Where throughout the day, she appears tired and sluggish, aimlessly walking, in those moments she seems almost alive again. She pounds on the invisible force keeping them in and screams and wails as she tries to get past the stone-ice pillars. Sometimes she cries out Vilda’s name, making pointless promises.

_I’m coming back to you._

_I swear I’ll hold you again._

_I won’t leave you again._

Vilda can’t take it anymore. She drops to her knees next to the struggling Syg and buries her face in her hands. She’s trembling and she clutches the roots of her hair. She whispers apologies, shouts them, but Syg doesn’t hear them. Eventually, Hela shows up. She takes one look at the distraught centaur next to her resident troublemaker and she sighs. She hasn’t donned her armor this time. Vilda continues to mutter broken apologies as Syg backs away from Hela and straight through her old lover. 

“No,” Syg whispers and shakes her head. Her voice cracks. “No, I have to go back!”

Hela rolls her eyes and groans. It seems they’ve had this conversation many times.

“Syg. I’d much rather be drinking mead right now than be here with your lot,” she shoots a glare at Vilda at that before she continues, “So if you could kindly stop defying me and come along…” 

Of course, Syg fights back. It looks drained but it’s a formidable stand and Vilda is overjoyed that she’s still defiant. She’s not dead, she can’t be. But Hela eventually takes her away again. Vilda stays at the Gate long after they are gone. Before she leaves, she conjures a sword lily at the base of the stone. The ice burns it away by the time she’s turned around, but she feels good that day. _You are strong_ , she told Syg, even if she didn’t see it.

After that, she becomes more lively and when she walks with Syg, she starts growing her flowers. 

First there’s a forget-me-not. Then a pink rose. Baby’s breath. Every time she fails to escape Helheim, Vilda makes her a chrysanthemum. Sometimes the ice burns the flowers away before Syg can see them. She doubts she gets a good enough look at them to recognize them, much less their meanings. But the first time she sees one, she gasps and kneels down next to it and whispers “Vilda...?” 

Vilda smiles and makes another one. With it, she makes a promise. _I’ll get us out of here. Just wait a bit more, elska._

-*-

Sometimes, Hela joins Vilda on her walks now. She sees Vilda’s new floral ritual and smiles softly at the love she witnesses when neither girl looks at her. Sometimes she makes herself known to Syg and points out the flowers to her, only to play coy when she asks if she was the one who made them with her magic. There are moments like when she sees Vilda looking at Syg with loving eyes, smiling when she notices her flowers, moments that make her entertain the idea of allowing the two lovers to go. But then her heart hardens, and reminds herself that a deal is a deal, and both her and the centaur are bound by one.

-*-

Syg starts talking to her when she sees the flowers. She doesn’t know what to make of the situation, talking to what looked like the void to her. Vilda replies, and looks for a way to get Syg and herself out of this mess. If only she had her soul, things would have been so much easier. Still, she makes do with her flowers, racking her brain for a solution, something to bargain away again. But she has nothing. Anything exchangeable, she has already given. Her soul rests in the hands of that damn fairy Isolde and she can’t get it back. Her body and knowledge is already Hela’s. She has nothing left to give, except maybe her love to Syg. She feels like she’s choking out of frustration, but she’s no longer drowning in despair. She will find a way. 

She catches Hela looking at the flowers wistfully more than once. She looks at the ruler of the underworld, the half-corpse who lived in a palace of ice and stone. _Odd, teaching you about nature spirits and life in a realm devoid of it._

When she summons a rose red as blood, harsh against the ice and snow, Hela’s eyes lock onto it and fill with wonder. Hela, the ruler of Helheim, realm of rocks and snow. The goddess who cannot make flowers and so keeps a centaur to show her. Vilda smiles. She knows what to do.

Some time later, Vilda comes into Hela’s throne room. A mere centaur standing in front of a regal, terrifying goddess. 

“I have a deal for you,” she says and raises her palm. In it, a cherry blossom blooms. Unlike all the rest she has created, it doesn’t die from the cold. She makes it seem effortless, but it takes active effort. Not that she’s about to let Hela know. 

Before Hela can dismiss her, she continues: “We are bound by a contract, you and I. I propose a new one, that will nullify the old one. Two lives in exchange for a thousand.”

Hela examines the blossom and hums. The ghost of a smile graces her lips. 

“You and Syg for a garden?” she asks. She considers it for a moment before she nods. She gestures to the throne room’s doors. 

“I suggest you get to work.”

The garden takes a lot out of her. By the time she is done, she feels like she’s lost some years off her lifespan. She fills the garden with flowers she believes Hela deserves. They tell a tale or regality and sometimes death. They speak of kindness. They are all sorts of colors, a stark contrast to the blue, white and black of the ice and the stone. Orange dahlias, red roses, purple carnations. 

Hela won’t admit it, but Vilda is sure she sees a genuinely happy smile when she sees the garden.

Syg protests when Hela goes to collect her. Vilda laughs for the first time in a long time, giddy with excitement. _She’s going to be free_ . More than that, she’s going to have Syg back at her side. She fights back the urge to touch her lover, tries to have patience. When she touches her again, it will be under the sun and they will both be warm- and _tangible._

“You’re letting me go?” Syg asks Hela in disbelief when she allows them passage past the pillars and escorts them past Nidhogg. She is met with silence. When they reach Yggdrasil’s roots, she asks: “Why?”

Hela shoots a look at Vilda behind Syg. “It wasn’t from the goodness of my heart, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she retorts. She gestures towards the root. “Well here you go. Isn’t this what you’ve been torturing me for all those years?” 

Syg hesitates. Vilda understands why. She creates a cornflower and hopes it eases her mind. Unlike in Helheim, the flower doesn’t burn and Syg gasps when she sees it. Suddenly, she feels Hela’s frosty touch on her back, and sees her other hand on Syg’s waist. 

“Vilda,” Hela says, and Syg splutters. She tears her gaze from the flower and starts looking around frantically, making Vilda chuckle.  
“Yes?”

“Please make sure when she dies again she goes to Valhalla instead of my realm, yeah?”

Before Vilda can make any promises, and Syg still trying to locate Vilda, Hela pushes them both through the darkness of the root-path.

In Midgard, a river dweller sees a centaur and a young shieldmaiden by the banks. They sit on top of each other and cry, yet their faces are almost split in half from their grins. They hold each other’s faces as they touch foreheads and laugh. The shieldmaiden kisses the centaur again and again, laughing hysterically in between kisses, and the centaur’s tail doesn’t stop flicking. He doesn’t get too close to their intimate moment, but as he continues on his way, he hears them whisper to each other. 

_“I missed you so much, elska.”_

_“Thank Skadi you’re alive”_

_“I love you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I was delighted to write this for  MarouliMeansLettuce 
> 
> Thank you for lending me your awesome characters for this story! They were a joy to write <3


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